Art Post Graduate Talks: William Davies

Event overview

In the past two or three years, the term 'weaponisation' has entered the political lexicon, to describe how civic and non-violent infrastructures and issues can be subverted as tools of violence. This term usefully captures the way the boundary between war and peace, discourse and violence, is becoming less certain and more permeable in contemporary politics. Drawing on the arguments in the newly published Nervous States: How feeling took over the world, this talk will draw on a range of political ideas regarding violence - including Arendt and Hobbes - to explore how language is 'weaponised' in online political arguments, and the forms of disruption and conflict that arise as a result.

BIO: William Davies is Reader in Political Economy at Goldsmiths. He is author of The Limits of Neoliberalism, The Happiness Industry and Nervous States, and editor of Economic Science Fictions.